Sea Change

(sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Terry Hidichuk)

 

Text: Mark 1:14-20                                                                        

 

Have you ever wondered what it was like for Mrs. Simon and Mr. Zebedee, the day Jesus strolled into the Galilee?

 

Mark tells us, that Jesus came to Simon (later to become Peter the rock) and to Andrew and the sons of Zebedee and said come on, put down your nets and follow me.”  

 

And they did.

 

No talk about the weather.
The number of fish they were catching.
No small talk.
Just invitation and response.

 

As Biblical Scholar, F. Scott Spencer reminds us:

 

With breathtaking audacity and sovereignty, Jesus dares to break into the lives of two fraternal pairs of fisherman, without warning, during business hours and order them to come after/follow me. Without discussion, without deliberation, they immediately and mysteriously leave their jobs and follow Jesus. [i]

 

But have you wondered what it was like for Mrs. Simon:

 

Maybe it happened like this.
Simon comes by to put some socks and underwear in suitcase and says Hey, babe, I met a guy.
And she answers of course, that’s nice, honey, will you be home for supper?

 

And Mr. Zebedee, he runs a little fishing business. Spent a lifetime at it.
And just when he is about ready to hand it over to the boys, they start folding up the nets climbing out of the boat, telling their father, we‘re outta here.

 

No warning,
no chance to talk to the accountants.
They’re gone.
Mr. Zebedee is left with his heart broken and his jaw dropped.
There is nothing to say.

 

Mark doesn’t spend a lot of time with Mrs. Simon and Mr. Zebedee.

 

This morning’s text,
Comes early in the Gospel.
In rapid succession:
The Good News is proclaimed.
Jesus is tempted in the wilderness
And John the baptizer is arrested.
Then Mark places Jesus in the Galilee,
near the seaside village of Capernaum.

 

He walked along the shore.
He spies two fisher-brothers, Simon and Andrew in mid cast, summons them to follow.

 

Jesus keeps moving:
Recruits yet another pair of brother-fishermen, James and John, busy at their work.
Jesus hooks two more followers on the fly.

 

Although providing no elaborate job description or plan of action, Jesus issues a succinct mission statement.

 

“I will make you fishers of people.”

 

There is an edge to these words.
It is as if Jesus is saying: I will make you what I want you to be.
This is no democracy.
This is brazen stuff.

 

 

Sometimes that tone gets lost in the North American church.
So often we have turned that image of fishing into an example of the evangelistic duty of every Christian to win souls for Jesus,
one by one.
To enlist others in our cozy fellowship
Bring more folk on the rolls.
Bring in more givers.
Get more folk to join our fishing club for Jesus.

 

Ched Myers, in his book Binding the Strong Man: a political reading of Mark’s story of Jesus…says whoa. Slow down partner. That’s not what is going on here.

 

Actually Meyers doesn’t exactly say it that way. Rather he offers us another lenses with which we can look at the Gospel in general and this text in particular.[ii]

 

We have a tendency to privatize the Gospel.
To turn the stories of Jesus into lessons about good manners and polite behavior and welcoming invitations to join the club.
Meyers invites us into Gospel that is not about minding our p’s and q’s but rather it is about turning the political and economic world we live in upside down.

 

Fishing is not evangelical activity or membership recruitment.
Fishing is about living in a new world that is in our midst but not yet fully defereniated.
Jesus is not offering the disciples a blueprint for the kingdom of God, he is inviting them to experience this new realm.

 

But before I go any further a little bit about fishing in the Galilee in first century Palestine…

 

Although fishers angled with hook and line:
no rod, no reel;
this was not what occupied Peter and company.
they cast nets to catch as many fish as possible.
This wasn’t for fun…this was the way they earned a living
This was work…hard work.
Trolling throughout the night on a lake subject to sudden storms.
Hauling in hundreds of pounds of fish.
Gutting them
Taking them to market.
Mending nets
Fixing boats.
This was tough work.
Grimy
Smelling
Back breaking.
It was work that was despised by the elites and the country club crowd.
Although they enjoyed eating the fish, they didn’t enjoy the company of the fishers.

 

Now the fishermen made some profit from this work.
But most revenue was siphoned off by Herod and the monopoly he enjoyed.

 

Herod was the first century’s equivalent of today’s 1%.
He controlled the Sea of Galilee as if it was his own private pond.
He developed his own microcosmic version of the Caesar’s claim to own all the oceans and the waterways and everything in them.
At every turn the fishermen had to pay.
There were quotas
Fees
Licenses and leases
Tolls
Yada, yada.

 

When Jesus comes by and says follow me he is saying to Simon and Andrew and James and John

 

You’re working for me now.
You’re not fishing for Herod anymore.
You’re not fishing for the Empire
You’re fishing for the Kingdom of God

 

When they put down their nets they cast their lot with a new ruler, a new realm where the very definition of fishing is changed.

 

You see, there is another aspect of fishing that ought not to be lost on us.
Fishing is about killing the fish.
The work of fishing is fatal and final for the fish and eerily evocative of the marauding, martial forces of the Roman Empire.

 

So what is Jesus up to with his people-fishing call?

 

Its hard to say.
But maybe
At some level
Jesus is appropriating the agenda of Herod,
of imperial domination,
of the 1% who really control everything
and Jesus is turning it upside down.

 

Fishing kills.
Not only the fish but the spirit of the fisherman.

 

Jesus is about catching people.
Far from killing them, life in God’s realm feeds them,
heals them,
exorcises
and resuscitates them.[iii]
To the left over,
the left out,
and left off,
there are more than the crumbs of charity:
there is the bread of justice.

 

Follow me, Jesus says and I will lead into a new mission in a new kingdom.
Jesus calls Simon and Andrew, James and John into a new world
They stop doing business as usual and they follow.

 

But what about Mrs. Simon and Mr. Zebedee.
They stay behind in the old and the familiar and the safe.
It may feel like hell but at least they are familiar with temperature.

 

On that day Jesus strolled into the Galilee, he walked into our world too.

 

There was a time when the church was embedded into the culture.
This period known as Christendom began in the early 4th century when Emperor Constantine declared the Christian faith to be the official religion of the Roman Empire.
Christendom has lasted a long time.
Over the centuries it became a territorial reality in the Western world.
That is the kind of Christianity most of us grew into .
We have our local churches in the same way we have our local market or our provincial law.
The church was the established social institution of religion.

 

In a world of Christendom, there was no need for conversion.
Your didn’t have to drop net and follow.
Because you became Christian by virtue of citizenship, birth, residence, culture.
Christian faith was a social given
Not a choice or a commitment.

 

In Shakespeare’s Tempest, Ariel sings…
 
Nothing of him doth fade
But suffer a sea change.
Into something rich and strange.[iv]

 

Christendom is dead.
There has been a sea change.

 

This is nobody’s fault.
There are large forces at work.
The cultural has changed and is changing.

 

It is as if life in the church is stuck in the house with Mrs. Simon and in the boat with Mr. Zebedee.
They are living in an old world.

 

Simon, Andrew, James and John are invited into a new kingdom, the shape of which is yet to be defined.
Where belonging is more important than belief.
Where the old world order is turned upside.
And there is no going back.
No tweeking at the edges.

 

These fisherman and their families are caught up in nothing short of a sea change.

 

This is not the Christ of Christendom
This is the Jesus who invites us into a new realm.

 

These are challenging times for church because I think we are straddling two worlds.
You see I think we have foot in the old world.
On foot rooted in denominationalism, and empire, and old definitions of success; large Sunday Schools, high attendance.
Many of us in the church still live with the hope that if we tried harder, preached better, made more cupcakes for the bake sale, were more welcoming, the kids will back like they used too, like we did.
Mrs. Simon, and Mr. Zebedee are living in the hope that the boys will get this Jesus’ stuff out of the system and return to way it was.

 

But that ain’t gonna happen.

 

You see we have a foot in another world too.
A new realm
A new order
Where conversion overcomes culture
Where belonging takes precedent over belief.
And mission is more important than management.
Where the bread of justice replaces the crumbs of charity.
Simon and Andrew and James and John put down their nets, and they entered a new world.

 

The sea change has come and it has left us with one foot on shore and one foot in the waves.

 

Don’t try this at home but I think it looks this.
One foot is on shore, rooted in the old foundation, the old way of doing business and one foot is in the waves, in the kingdom we don’t need to understand as much as it is calling us to experience.

 

The thing is, we can’t stay like this.
It starts to hurt.
We can bring the foot to shore and with Mrs. Simon and Mr. Zebedee we can stay on shore,
stay in the boat,
do business as usual,
continue to feed off of limited resources for a while but seas changed,
we are getting swamped,
the foundations of our old structures are crumbling and the boats are filling water,
some can stay on shore and hang in there but some might we have to drop the nets head into the waves and see where they take us.

 

This is the good news the Gospel.

 

Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


[i] F. Scott Spencer, “Follow Me: The Imperious Call of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels”, Interpretation, April, 2005, p.142.

[ii] Ched Meyers. “Binding the Strong Man”, Orbis Books, 1990, p.7-8.

[iii] Spencer, p. 144.

[iv] Anthony B. Robinson, “Changing the conversation: a third way for congregations”, Eerdman Publishing, 2008, p. 18,